first european copies contain errors. the cd has an
intro of 40 seconds of a live track by another band which
makes every track start 40 seconds later than the track
mark. Listen to the intro of Kid A just before the actual
first track ‘Everything in it’s right place’ starts: click here.

Is Kid A really about cloning humans?
Thom: “That was entirely my fault [laughs]. Early on,
Stanley Donwood, who does our artwork, and I started doing
this thing, Test Specimen, a cartoon about giving birth to
a monster, the Frankenstein thing. For example, the bear logo–
that is a test specimen, the first mutant. The idea was loosely
based on stuff we were reading about genetically modified
food. We got obsessed with the idea of mutation entering the
DNA of the human species. One episode was about these teddy
bears that mutate and start eating children. It was this running
joke, which wasn’t really funny. But in our usual way, it
addressed a lot of our paranoias and anxieties. Kid A was
just a name flying around– it was a name on one of the sequencers.”

How do you feel (3 months after the release)
Kid A was received, did it all go according to plan? Jonny
and Colin: “It seemed to be received with a series of kickings
in the press.” “I think we didn’t give people enough time
to listen to it as a record when it first came out. I also
think, to be honest, it’s the nature of the times we are in,
the guitar music that is successful now is all of average
standard. I heard the controller of Radio 1 say its demographic
is 15-25, so I think we were kind of excluded from a lot of
things – the chance for the music to be heard. I think it
was the right thing for us to do and to take a side step at
a time when other artists have been releasing records of a
considerable stature and see their records drop of out of
the 10’s, 20’s and 30’s two weeks later.”

All the reviews were saying how difficult
it was, and yet it was an album, for the most part, of recognisable
Radiohead songs perhaps without the guitars… ” Jonny
and Colin: “The other thing is people who were writing
about us really liked us, and they can be as dangerous as
people who really hate us. As you could confound and disappoint
their expectations. I think a lot of writers expected us to
come back and save a certain sort of music genre from the
palled versions which have been put out to much commercial
success – they expected us to come back with a combination
of ‘OK Computer’ and ‘The Bends’ and definitively stamp on
these six string whippersnappers. The fact that we didn’t
do that I think means people who got their guitars out have
had to put them back into the wardrobe,”

Colin, what have you done on this record
other than play the bass guitar? Colin: “I sort of drunkenly
played other people’s records over the top of what we were
recording and said it should sound like that.” “But, that’s
exactly how we work.” “I took the Alice Coltrane and played
it over a song called ‘Dollars and Cents’ which is on the
next record, and Jonny wrote this beautiful string arrangement
– this sort of Coltrane style as a backing for it. I don’t
know, before I did more arrangement things that was in the
context of us working out things live in a room together,
and we’ve kid of done less of that on this record. So it’s
been a different experience for all of us. I’ve been trying
to get into more of the electronic thing and the sampling
and channelling what I like about different types of music.”

You’ve brought in some interesting CDs
to illustrate the thinking behind the album… “One of
the things Thom was into was Warp Records, and the different
sounds. He was sick of the same sounds, the same things make
the same noises on similar records. For him what was coming
out of that was the most exciting, forward, aspect of contemporary
music.”

What role did your producer, Nigel
Godrich, play? He played a huge part. Nigel’s gift
is his ability to stitch sounds together and create a sound
curtain quickly. It was a very different relationship with
this one, but with ‘OK Computer’ we’d rehearsed all the songs
and we just went and recorded it. With this record there was
a lot more to-ing and fro-ing and work in the studio.”